Individuals have historically networked with one another by joining social clubs, attending social events, meeting friends through other friends, and so forth. The Internet has made keeping in touch with friends and acquaintances more convenient for many people. For other people, the Internet provides a social forum for networking and meeting new people.
Internet users employ social networking to communicate with friends, family, acquaintances and people who may have similar interests, for example, by sharing photos, videos, and messages either publically for all of their network and possibly the Internet to see, or privately from one person to another.
In order to facilitate communications between vast numbers of individuals, various social networking websites have been developed in recent years. Social networking websites can provide organizational tools and forums for allowing these individuals to interact with one anther via the social networking website. Many users prefer to limit communications to specific groups of other users.
Known social networking websites have primarily been developed linking one user-created profile to another user-created profile. Conventionally, the link between profiles occurs when a request is sent and accepted between two users over a wide area network.
There is a continuing need for an improved social networking system and method for sharing user data and user applications over a local area network. Desirably, the social networking system provides users with the ability to identify other users over a local area network, as well as associates user data with the local area network for sharing with other users.